Oh Snap! Social media firms sink after bleak warning from Snapchat parent

Social media firms sink after bleak warning from Snapchat parent underlines how the Russia-Ukraine war, surging inflation and rising interest rates are hobbling social media companies at a time when they had just started recovering the impact of changes to Apple's iOS operating system.

Reuters
May 24, 2022 / 08:40 PM IST

(Representative Image)






 Snap Inc's (SNAP.N) shares plunged nearly 40% on Tuesday after a profit warning from the Snapchat parent signaled tough times ahead for the once-booming digital ad industry, sparking a sector-wide selloff.


The company was on course to erase more than $14 billion in market value, while Meta Platforms (FB.O), Pinterest (PINS.N), Twitter (TWTR.N) and Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O) were altogether set to lose nearly $140 billion if losses hold.










The bleak view from one of the sector's most known players underlines how the Russia-Ukraine war, surging inflation and rising interest rates are hobbling social media companies at a time when they had just started recovering the impact of changes to Apple's iOS operating system.


"Snap is a proxy for online advertising and when you see weakness there then you automatically think Facebook, Pinterest and Google," said Dennis Dick, a trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas.


"Once you start thinking about Google, that's when the markets starts to sell off."


Tuesday's selloff comes days after a Bank of America fund managers survey indicated investors are becoming increasingly bearish on tech stocks, a stark reversal to a bullish trend in the past 14 years.












"There's a lot to deal with in the macro environment today," Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said at a tech conference on Monday.




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Reuters
Tags: #Google #impact of Russia Ukraine crisis #Russia Ukraine crisis #Snapchat #social media #Technology #Twitter
first published: May 24, 2022 08:39 pm